


and I will pull my whole heart up to the surface

by crackers4jenn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: 15x20 fix-it fic. Heaven feels perfect, until suddenly it doesn't.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 150





	and I will pull my whole heart up to the surface

**Author's Note:**

> Supernatural dropped a crumb and I will use it to feast.

Dean drives Baby without a care in the world; in his gut, he knows with absolute certainty Sam is okay. Kinda feels like he got upgraded with some freaky, sixth sense mood ring dialed directly into him. He can't read his thoughts or, you know, slip onto the nearest cloud to peek in on his little brother, but every cell, every molecule in him, real or not, FEELS his presence as a calm, quiet stillness.

The road ahead is empty and endless, just one long, straight line with a hell of a view. The gas gauge boasts a full tank. When he switches on the radio, Kansas hums out of the speakers at just the right volume, mellow and melodic.

It's damn perfect, until suddenly it isn't.

At first, it's the glare of the sun in his eyes; he flips down the visor. Then it's a leg cramp, so he eases off the gas a little. After, Kansas stops playing and Taylor Swift comes on. _Country_ Taylor.

Smiling softly to himself, he thinks of --

"Hello, Dean."

Dean slams on the brakes. "Son of a," he curses while the car skids to a stop with a cloud of dirt and dust billowing up behind them.

Dean whips around, met right away with the sight of Cas in the backseat, looking serious and on the grim side.

"Cas?" Dean breathes out.

"You think very loudly."

Dean just stares.

Cas says, "I didn't expect to see you again so soon."

Finding his voice, and his sarcasm, he huffs out, "Don't sound so disappointed. What, you lose a bet with Bobby or somethin'?"

Cas agrees, with meaning, "Or something." Before Dean can unpack that, Cas tells him, "It's good to see you, even if the circumstances are less than desirable."

"How, Cas?" Dean asks, skipping to the question that's pinging around his head the sharpest. "Last I saw you, you were..." He swallows around the rising guilt and grief the memory causes him, even here, in literal Heaven.

Cas looks out at the mountainscape beside them, his gaze very far away. Then he sighs and gets out of the car, leaving the door wide open behind him. He heads towards the trunk and lingers. After a beat, Dean follows him, closing his and Cas's door as he goes.

Not quite making eye contact, while Dean's still walking his way, Cas tells him, "Jack pulled me out."

Dean stops and waits for more. And waits.

"And?" he prompts.

Cas looks away. "We fixed Heaven."

"Yeah, I can see that, Cas." His voice is tight with the emotions he's keeping just as firm of a grip on. He steps closer. "So you got out and decided, hey, gonna spiff up nirvana? You didn't think to check in with me and Sam?"

Somehow Cas makes even less eye contact. Faintly he admits, "I did."

Dean can't be hearing him right. Because that would mean Cas flew in, took a look, and fucked back off. "I'm sorry, you--?"

With some determination, Cas meets his stare head-on. "Jack lay siege and rescued me from the Empty, leaving me with a choice. I could join him and right Heaven to its intended state, or. I could stay behind, as a human, with you and Sam."

It feels like the worst kind of punch to the stomach. To know Cas could've picked -- it doesn matter, because he _didn't,_ and somehow it's the same ol' song and dance.

"I get it," he tells him, hurt, which turns his tone and all his thoughts mean. "When do you ever stick around anyway? Huh? For the long haul? 'Cause we need a guy battin' clean-up, to -- to fall on the sacrificial sword." He smiles tightly. "That's what you're good at, isn't it?"

Cas's eyes narrow, his head tipping to the side. "So the alternative was, what? I return only days later, newly mortal, and you and Sam welcome me with open arms, exactly as you always have every time I've needed your help? You and Sam were fine. I saw--"

"You saw _what_? It's barely been two weeks since the world went back to being, y'know. _The world_."

Cas stands firm. "You moved on."

Dean can't believe he's hearing this. "I moved on," he repeats.

"Yes."

Dean spins away, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. A mental count to three later, he rounds back on Cas. "You're a friggin' twelve year old, you know that, right? _I moved on._ What the hell was I supposed to do, cry myself to sleep every night?"

"Now you're just being an ass," Cas mutters.

"I'm serious, what did I need to do to get you to stay? Write in my diary, hope to hell you'd see it?"

"I didn't want to obligate you." Cas pulls out his ace and doesn't back down. "With my feelings."

That shuts Dean up fast. He barely processed what Cas said to him when it was happening, but even after, he didn't let his mind wander, didn't want to wonder if Cas meant it the same way a normal person would've. It wouldn't have gotten him anywhere but the bottom of a bottle. Well, more bottles.

Cas shakes his head and turns again toward the mountains. "This is my point."

Dean's mind is racing, his thoughts moving too quick to stick. But he's getting closer and closer to something tangible. 

Cas says, "You mentioned it, and... I plan on staying. For the long haul."

Then it hits him.

Maybe it's his new Spidey senses -- maybe he just has nothing to lose here, freshly woken from his literal deathbed. But they don't have to keep weighing the scale of their betrayals against each other. All that is gone, the cosmic slate wiped clean.

"Hey, dumbass," he calls, soft and astonished. It catches Cas's attention. "I did have a plan, to get you out. It just required a little more liquor and a lot more courage. I wasn't gonna leave you."

He can see the second it starts to dawn on Cas what Dean is trying to say.

"For the record," Dean says, "I don't have a diary. But if I knew you were looking... If I'd've known, I would've wrote something, Cas. You know that."

Cas just squints at him. Waiting for the point, or the other shoe to drop.

Dean splays his hands out, gesturing. "I'm in Heaven, right? So, I got all I could ever want." Pointedly, "All I _do_ want."

And that squint only deepens. "I did make sure Jack manifested your car."

There's a full fifteen second long staring contest where Cas seems convinced he's nailed the source of Dean's sudden contentment, while Dean wonders how the hell he got so soft for a dude who might've just implied he thought Dean wants to bang his car.

Dean opens his mouth twice before any words come out. "I meant you."

Cas still doesn't seem to get it, because apparently you can drop the two of them in the promised land and somehow they're still going to miscommunicate, but then. It lands. Boy, does it.

Cas goes from rigid and closed off, to light and openly beaming what feels like admiration and affection solely at Dean. If this place was a cartoon, there'd be actual drawn hearts in his eyes.

"Alright," Dean says with some gruffness he doesn't mean, "this is startin' to feel a little too Hallmark for me." With a cringe, "I feel like I'm gonna look down and be wearing a cable knit sweater, holding a latte."

"Well, it is _your_ afterlife," Cas reasons, teasing lilt and all, lobbing those accusations right back at him.

Damn. 

"Cas, I--"

He feels, then, a tug. 

Sam. But it's been like _three minutes._ How--?

Maybe Cas is tuned into the same thing he is, because he just seems to _know_. "Time moves differently here, Dean."

"Yeah, Bobby mentioned," Dean says distractedly, with Sam overwhelmingly pulling at him, yanking him towards someplace else.

"You should go," Cas tells him, back to stoic. Back to checked and guarded emotions. 

Dean does go. Dean mindlessly heads to the driver's side, but then.

"Cas," he breathes, rushing him before Cas has time to brace for the hug Dean full-body tackles him with. They rock from the force of it, and at first Cas grips back just to steady himself, only it turns fast into a relieved, desperate hold, his fists clenching Dean's coat.

Dean winds a hand up Cas's back until he's cradling his head, then the side of his face, and he pulls back just to look at him. He doesn't have to quiet any nagging voice whispering he doesn't deserve this, that he can't have it.

With some tranquility of his own, Cas says again, "Go. I'll be here."

He can't believe he gets this. That it's his to take without fear of the finish line. 

He lets his hand fall as he pulls away, clapping Cas on the shoulder. He doesn't get very far again, this time because of Cas, who stops and draws him back in with a kiss that stifles the half-second of confusion bouncing around Dean's brain the moment their mouths meet. All at once, peace floods his body, as well as some other feelings that make him wonder vaguely if it's possible to defile the place.

Cas kisses him just long enough to turn Dean's brain into a screensaver and then he's moving off, backing up with hands that linger on Dean's neck, his shoulder, his wrist.

The son of a bitch is smiling at him.

There's a line tethered to him that keeps tugging him towards Sam, and he's gonna follow it, but here, now, with Cas and all of Heaven laid out in front of him, it doesn't feel so taut, doesn't feel like a lifeline. It feels like he's ready to let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> DEAN/CAS IN ETERNAL HEAVEN TOGETHER, CONFIRMED.


End file.
